What drives you as a scientist?

What drives me as a scientist has changed over the course of my career. It was my fascination with experimentation that first got me interested in biology. In high school, I took vials of fruit flies to a radiation oncology department and tested the effects of radiation on the mutation rate. When I came to the U.S. to study biochemistry in college, I was drawn to the mysteries of the brain. While my PhD and postdoctoral work continued on very fundamental questions about how neurons connect to each other, advances in genetics and neuroscience allowed me to bring rigorous basic science approaches to clinical questions. So more and more, my science is driven by a need to bring treatments to the patients I see in the clinic. Fortunately, this is no longer a long-term, aspirational goal, but something within reach in my career. …

Like many, I have a Facebook page where I share funny travel stories and cute pictures of my cat with friends and family. But for a long time I didn’t understand how such a platform, and others like Twitter, could affect how business is conducted in the life science industry, and how it fit in my own professional life as a hospital technology licensing manager.

I didn’t get it until a tweet from my colleague and fellow blogger Keeley Wray (@Market_Spy) established a direct contact with a regenerative medicine company potentially interested in a cell-based technology in my portfolio. I was surprised: so Twitter isn’t just for celebrities pushing their albums, movies and perfumes to millions of fans? Consequently, six months ago, I enthusiastically joined the Twitterverse (@maude_tessier) and haven’t looked back.

I’m not the only one recognizing the power of social media in the work that pharma, biotech and academic medical institutions do. Last week at the BioPharm America conference, a 90-minute interactive roundtable discussion emphasized the use of social media to help achieve business objectives. …